


Passenger

by RayGonz



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Break Up, Divorce, F/M, Falling In Love, First Love, Long-Term Relationship(s), Marriage, One Shot, Past Relationship(s), Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 11:15:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11229798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RayGonz/pseuds/RayGonz
Summary: Vanessa fell in love with him in the passenger seat at seventeen, almost eighteen. Years later, four million in bonds, and for all those years where she thought she'd been his partner, she was just a passenger.





	Passenger

**Author's Note:**

> I've tried my best at keeping this as canon as I can, but pardon my leeway. I still completely see this as fitting into the storyline. 
> 
> Inspired after listening to Khalid's "Coaster"

When she's five years old, her idea of love is some Disney concoction, some half-bred romanticizing ideal of a girl that goes to bed with her palms pressed to her eardrums, squeezing until she can't hear her daddy's drunken tirade, and the product of a girl that's convinced she's going to be whisked away by a prince charming and she'll never have to cower away in her closet when the screaming escalates in her broken home. She's seventeen when any semblance of that twisted fairytale is warped into something she swears she recognizes.

He's not exactly the Prince Charming she pictured. There's no horse-drawn carriage or a sword at his side. There's not much to his name besides a laundry list of petty crime and juvenile time, pick-pocketing from the corner store or vandalism of some abandoned property on the fringes of town, and a title to a car that is horribly ugly with its putrid green paint coat to some suburban father's washed fantasy of a muscle car.

They've grown up together somewhat, orbiting another but never quite entangling paths. She lived a few streets down from him, dilapidated house in a crumbling neighborhood, more sirens and gunshots than laughter of children. It's something that surprises them years later and in her head, must be destiny. But because of Richie, he went to an elementary school that was in the middle class section of town, homes that left front doors unlocked and streets brimming with children. Not until high school is he even put into an environment where he doesn't feel so isolated with kids that came from this upbringing but not enough 'brains' to be a scholarship kid.

High school for them is very different. She's the girl that wiggles her way into the cheer squad even if she spends most of the time under the influence, every boy is aware of her predilection for alcohol and that if she's inebriated enough, she'll go to bed with you. School for her is an escape. He's the boy that hardly shows up to class because for him, school is a nuisance, and he's got to be learning from Eddie about the way he's determined he's going to live his life. When he does come, it's as an outcast, always on the fringe of all the shenanigans, and he's seen as someone to avoid, especially after the cops came to take him into custody a few weeks into freshmen year.

When they meet, it's in the parking lot of Big Khuna's, he's coming out the back door and moving toward a burgundy Mustang, crumpled in his hand is a greasy bag of burgers and fries that he hands off to the driver through the passenger window, all cranked down. And she's there, sitting on the hood of a little supped up Mazda, watching a rowdy bunch of the football team in the parking lot. She's technically on a date, maybe, the quarterback suggested something along the lines of a date, but she's inclined to believe that this is going nowhere, all these boys are not the one for her.

She's drawn to him like a moth to a flame, and she's left the sanctuary of predictable for something she knows will be volatile because he must be some kind of hurricane. Her feet carry her to the side of the building near the back door and she leans against it, waiting for him to return, watching him exchange a few words with the driver before he peels away.

He recognizes her as the girl that gets talked about in the locker room, the girl that every guy knows. He's never been interested in her before because she'd been too visible, too memorable, and it's not something he was going to pursue—she'd have been a vulnerability down the line. But she's always been pretty, but even that's simple. Yet, with her leaning there against the wall, waiting for him, he's inclined to loiter out here with her.

Given the talk, he'd assumed she was timid, spineless, the kind of girl that trailed behind and kept her lips pressed together. It's the kind of girl he expects to be complacent with the brawn of a jock and all that testosterone. He's wrong, inexplicably so. She's brash and bold. She's the girl he always imagined a gun-toting Bonnie was to her Clyde.

Where she might have assumed him to be unstable and teetering, he's composed and measured, but there's that lingering scent of mystery. He speaks about this job and this life as if it's temporary and one day, it will all be dust in his tracks, and there's something greater beyond. He's elusive about what will be, but she gets the sense that it's unfathomable to her and stunning beyond words, beyond comprehension.

All her life has felt predestined. There were just several options of destiny. Dating these football boys was one of them. A fate of beer belly and two kids, stagnant and suburban. It'd have been a life she could have settled for, but it's not the life she wants. She wanted magical and mysterious. Something she could have never imagined.

For her, she falls in love with him within months. The first time she realizes it, she's sitting in the passenger seat of the damn car with him, and he's looking out to the road, nothing quite remarkable about the destination they're going towards, just that she gets this feeling that she always wants to be in this seat and beside him.

For him, he swears he loves her months after she falls in love with him, and he tells her when she's lying against him in her little cramped bed, hours after dusk.

She graduates, cap and gown, and he's there in the bleachers, as a drop-out.

Before she moves in, she runs out of a convenience store, bottle of rum in hand to the car and he peels away, smiling widely as she earns her stripes for the lifestyle.

By the time they're done, after all the years, her record is tainted with accessory to grand theft auto, aiding and abetting a felon, brandishing a firearm, failure to appear, accessory to bank robbery, and she's stuck serving a twenty-year bid, in part because of cooperation and some charges were dropped.

When she moved in, she'd been so young, and she's got no idea what this world is going to give her, even when he makes the suggestion they leave Kansas City. She's got this fantasy that this is just the beginning to the rest of their lives.

She doesn't get along with Richie. But she grits her teeth and tries to keep it all calm. For her, it's all temporary, after the jobs, the brothers will have to go separate ways, stay apart if they want a chance at anything beyond a federal agent's bullet. The two of them together is too risky when it's all said and done. It's why she's been slowly plotting a life without Richie—beach house and an armful of kids, just her and Seth.

He's not as blind as she thinks him to be when it comes to Richie. It's why he lies about the tattoo he gets done one weekend without her.

He marries her in a Vegas chapel months later, both far too young. He isn't all that sure why, except that she's some rendition of his mom, all beauty and fire, and he doesn't want to die alone, whether it be the chair or bleeding out on a sidewalk months from now.

Later that night, she's staring at herself in the mirror, repeating his last name and her name again and again. She's a flightless as a bird when she hears it.

The night before he gets arrested, he doesn't even touch her as he falls into bed. It's strange then, for months, they've been drifting apart as much as she tried to reach out to him. He spent most nights out at some bar, his ring long gone by now. He swears this will be the last job and then they can go away together, without Richie. And in her heart, she prays it's true because she's tired of this running, 34 jobs and she's exhausted. She wants something different before they're destroyed by this.

Since she left with him, it's all the little things that have been collecting at the bottom of her glass that she can't swallow down anymore. It's the all consuming need for her to be the partner, but then take the backseat to Richie. It's his ambivalence to the way he makes her feel when he chooses some grungy bar or strip club for a meeting. It's his expectation that she's always just a step behind him. It's all the lies and secrets, all the names she's gone by. It's the lack of having a home. It's living like a cockroach more often than not.

But when she thinks about leaving him, she can't go because she wants that future over the hill, the one he's got and had since she met him. And when she's back in the car with him, she feels seventeen all over again, hopelessly in love with him.

She goes to visit him after he's been arrested, she's all tears and betrayal because it's five years delay to their derailed plans and any of their plans have to be scraped for this.

A week later, he sends divorce papers.

She blames the fact that she never assured him that she'd wait for him, but she signs them any ways. She convinces herself that five years from now, she will be the home he goes to, instead of Richie.

She blows out his candles every year with the cake she bakes for him.

He sends her a letter, asking for her to come back and again, wanting all those things she used to tell him she wanted. And he's got a promise of something beautiful.

Kissing him again is like in high school that first time.

Kissing her again is like all those memories you had as a kid, wanting to be younger than you are but knowing it's impossible because you'll never be that young again, that naive again.

When he offers her the four million afterwards, she's brought back to the Vegas days, when everything was so shiny and loud, when she loved him the most she's ever loved him, all blinding and echoing everywhere. He didn't love her as much. He never quite loved her like she loved him.

Everything with Seth Gecko was fast, miles and miles non-stop. Moving to the next city, the next job, the next contact, next, next. She was always slower. She wanted the stupid trinket from the gas station and she wanted to stop on the road. She wanted to pause, let it sink deep into the soles of your feet, into your bones, wanted to remember it all one day because it was all going to some story that she'd tell their kids and grandkids. 

For him, the guns, the silent alarms, the sirens, the safe, the patrons, we're all the things he considered before her. She'd been a second thought. 

She was always going to be in the motel room, waiting for him, or sitting in the car with the engine running. She was an accomplice, an accessory.

The first words out of her mouth about a whore they saw years ago because that's how she feels after all this time. And God, she's angry about it.

She wasn't ever his partner. And for years, she wanted to be. She was always just a passenger.


End file.
